Just what’s an enterprise device these days?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Networking, Wireless, Mobile on
It used to be so easy.
IT departments got to define just what could be used by a company’s staff. Everything from PCs to laptops to phones was in their purview, and everything that could be controlled was - locked down and managed to make sure that nothing went wrong.
But then came a rash of new devices, of new services, and a new generation of staff.
They’d grown up with a flexible world, and they wanted nothing less from their employers.
At least Windows group policies meant that a proliferation of desktop PCs could be managed, but how could new mobile devices be controlled - and how could potentially expensive roaming bills be managed?
Laptops were safely under control, as tools like iPass gave businesses the ability to manage WiFi access, with one flat fee for each user every month, rather than having to pay expensive hotspot roaming rates.With WiFi now a common smartphone feature, it can also be used to avoid data roaming costs(as well as delivering more bandwidth than slow and congested 3G data services). That’s where iPass’ new strategy comes in, as instead of just delivering Windows and Windows Mobile clients, there are also Mac, iPhone and Symbian versions of the software - with more to come. There’s another advantage here, as the same username and password can be used with mobile devices as well as with laptops, keeping billing to the same single flat fee per user.
We recently spent some time with the iPass iPhone client, and were pleasantly surprised that it worked around the device’s limitations effectively (and still works happily with OS 3.0). There’s a BlackBerry client on the horizon now, too, which will make it a lot easier for roaming BlackBerry users to avoid racking up their bills (though there still needs to be a better way of managing which browser you’re using on a BlackBerry). And of course these are tools you can push out to users, using device management suites to make sure that only devices with WiFi hardware get the software they need.
Tools like this mean one simple thing: any device is an enterprise device.
And you know? That’s a good thing.
–Simon
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